


And Then There's Champagne

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-26 18:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17146559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: hello to honeysparks! i've never written for this particular pairing before and i wasn't totally sure if i nailed their dynamic (or what it would've been if they'd ever actually met on the show rip) but hopefully you enjoy it nonetheless and have a happy holiday season!!thanks to my beta jennie! i hope you enjoy the formatting ;))as a final note, this takes place somewhere between when jo started hunting and before her mother started hunting with her, so ambiguously between seasons two and three





	And Then There's Champagne

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bloodsparks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsparks/gifts).



> hello to honeysparks! i've never written for this particular pairing before and i wasn't totally sure if i nailed their dynamic (or what it would've been if they'd ever actually met on the show rip) but hopefully you enjoy it nonetheless and have a happy holiday season!!
> 
> thanks to my beta jennie! i hope you enjoy the formatting ;))
> 
> as a final note, this takes place somewhere between when jo started hunting and before her mother started hunting with her, so ambiguously between seasons two and three

**And Then There's Champagne**

 

 

There was a woman who came to the Roadhouse two or three times a year, just to sit out of the way in the back, talk with someone a few minutes, then leave. Jo knew she wasn’t a hunter—no, she was missing the ever-growing patchwork of scars, the dried blood and black dirt under her fingernails, the way they slammed down a drink like it was the last thing they had left in the world—but the way she looked around the room made Jo think she wasn’t quite a civilian either.

And she always asked for champagne, no matter how many times Jo told her that the only thing their little backwater bar’s clientele had a taste for was cheap beer and even cheaper whiskey.

It never seemed to bother her though, and even though it was probably nothing but coincidence she eventually only seemed to show when Jo was on her shift, Jo decided she liked her anyways.

Enough that one night she even bought a bottle of Perrier and kept it tucked under the counter, saving it for the next occasion her budding crush swung by.

But there were more meaningful things she could be doing than serving beer to drunk assholes, and she left home for good before she ever could ever ask.

 

 

* * *

 

               

Hunting meant more to her than bussing tables ever had, and Jo was happy even when she stumbled back into her motel room bruised and battered with cuts deep enough to need stitches.

Even if she didn’t think she’d ever slept in such empty rooms at night.

 

 

* * *

 

 

                There were all the makings of a hunt in a little town in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, so Jo packed up her things and drove east, canvassed the place until she got a break, and went out to a little wood building with a hand painted sign stuck into the lawn out front.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Jo looked to the left, and instantly knew she’d found what she was looking for.

The idol was a crudely carved little wooden thing, and if weren’t for the splatter of vivid red across its front and the two rusty brown nails driven deep through both its eyes, Jo wouldn’t have even spared it a second glance.

Everything in the cramped self-proclaimed occult museum was intriguing, unsettling, or some unseemly combination of the two, so that wasn’t enough to hold her attention by itself.

The sense of doom and flare of paranoia she felt the second she laid eyes on it, though? That was not. Neither was the trail of bodies that the museum had left behind its last few stops, all complaining of debilitating nightmares before they’d offed themselves wasn’t either.

“Fantastic,” Jo muttered, snapping her eyes shut once the dazed spell broke.

Getting her neck to turn away was like moving through tar, but she stubborn enough to know better than to quit until she was looking off at the wall.

Great. Just great.

She hadn’t even been in town more than half an hour, and the thing she was after already had its hooks in her. Maybe her mother had been right, and she was going to die out here hunting on her own, bleeding out on— _no,_  she just about screamed back at the little voice that was picking up speed in her head,  _I’ll be fine._

Forcing in a deep breath, she reassessed.

The idol was encased in thick glass, but the lock on it was mediocre at best. A couple bobby pins would probably just the trick just as well as the lockpick set she kept under the back seat—which was good, because unlike some, she hadn’t spent her childhood working on finicky locks. (Well, except for the ones her mom had used to lock up her own private store of high-shelf liquor, but that was another matter).

Dragging into another breath, Jo turned on her heels and forced herself to walk. Maybe she’d get lucky, and the further away she got, the weaker the idol’s influence?

She stepped outside and found she had no such luck.

“I fucking hate this place,” Jo muttered, shaking her head as she trudged towards her car.

This was easy, she told herself. She’d been against all kinds of creatures and curses. This wasn’t going to kill her. No, if she went out, it’d be with a bang—not with a fancy fucking block of wood.

Tonight, she’d come back, snatch up the idol, and burn the fucking thing.

All she had to do was make sure she didn’t fall asleep until then—easy.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Still, just to be sure, she made to the nearest coffee shop, dropped a ten on the counter, and gave the barista her sweetest smile before asking,

“Any chance you can just get me a cup of espresso shots?”

You could never be too safe, after all.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ten thirty saw Jo sitting in her car outside the rundown little building, buzzing with adrenaline.

Half an hour had gone by since someone had last left the building, and since she was just about buzzing with caffeine, Jo decided that was good enough for her.          

She slipped out of her car and slunk towards the door, popping it open after jambling with the lock for a minute or two. The vague scent of dust and mildew greeted her once again, but the familiar smell wasn’t much of a comfort. The whole place had been amusing, if not a little unsettling, in the day. Alone in the dark, it was outright creepy.

Then again, the same could be said of most places Jo ended up on her hunts.

She crept around creepy dolls and amputated animal parts to the display where the idol had been earlier, and stopped short in the middle of the room, panic seizing her.

It was empty.

“Fucking hell,” she cursed, launching towards the empty display to give it a second look.

Not empty, she realized, eyes falling into something white at the bottom of the display. She swung the door open—it wasn’t even locked anymore—and took a closer look before picking it up.

It was looked like an index card, but the paper was thick and cream-colored like the wedding invitations her mother used to get, and the handwriting was just as fancy.

She read it once, then a second time to make sure she’d read it right the first time, and her lips pressed into a line. It would’ve been easy to mistake it for a cooking recipe if some of the more colorful ingredients hadn’t been lamb’s blood and dove’s heart, but Jo had worked enough spells in the past year to know what she was looking at.

Her thief had left her a purification spell, and beneath that, written in the same loopy calligraphy was,

“I missed you the last time I was in town. Maybe next time we’re working towards the same prize we’ll have a second to catch up over a glass of Perignon, hm? I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of each other soon.”

Jo tapped the card twice against her hand, looked around just to make sure she wasn’t about to be jumped by someone in the dark, and headed out the door.

Thirteen hours down the line and one spell later, the pieces would fall together.

Jo would remember a woman she’d seen earlier that day in the museum. She’d been wearing sunglasses, looked a little too upper crust to be slimming it out in some tourist trap. The hair color and height had been wrong, but Jo had thought maybe, maybe for just a moment, she’d thought the woman had been watching her from behind the lenses.

Jo thought about the bottle of champagne she kept in her car, always promising herself she’d crack it open after a good hunt only to never end up following through, and she shook her head.

 

 

* * *

 

 

November of the same year saw Jo in another backwater town in southern Minnesota (just for once, she thought it’d be nice if a nest of vampires would spring up somewhere nice and temperate like Malibu or Miami). It was only after she’d gone through the trouble of tracking them down that she found they had a hostage, and only _after_ she’d killed all six that she recognized just who it was.

 _“You,”_ Jo realized, eyes widening.

The woman didn’t even have the grace to look abashed, just looked up at her and flashed a smile that was just as charming as Jo remembered.

“I think we’re on a first name basis now, don’t you?” she asked, not even missing a beat. She must’ve caught the way Jo’s eyes widened in something that was a cousin to panic because her head fall back as she laughed. “Don’t tell me you gawked at me from behind the bar for six years and never once thought to ask for my name the whole time.”

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Jo angrily hastened to defend herself, squaring her shoulders. “And it doesn’t, does it? You’re not even a hunter.”

“No,” Bela acquiesced after a moment of thought, her smile returning even sharper than ever. “I’m more of an… acquirer. Or filthy rich, if I had to put it into words myself.”

Jo stepped towards her, maybe to stare her down a little harder just like how her mother had taught her to do, or maybe to cut the ropes off her wrists—or not because Bela stood with grace, and the ropes slipped down off her wrists, knots already undone.

“You were free _this whole time_?” Jo snapped once she recovered from the shock, and now at least she had a good reason to be mad.

“Well,” she paused, and made a token effort at looking ashamed right up until she realized Jo wasn’t about to buy it, then laughed. “I was sure you could handle it. You wouldn’t have lasted as a hunter this long if you couldn’t.”

“Six is more than I’ve ever taken out,” she countered.

“And now you have something to bring back to the next boys’ club chat!”

Bela sauntered over to one of the corpses, leaning over to fish through the vampire’s pockets until she came up with a necklace—it was golden and amber, and the centerpiece stone shone with a light that was clearly more than a little supernatural.

Jo stepped forwards, half-tempted to snatch the necklace straight out of her hands. But with no way or knowing whether it was cursed or hexed or who the hell knew what else, her hands stayed firmly at her sides, balling up into fists.

 _“That’s_ why you’re here? To snatch some necklace from a vampire—wait, did you _let_ them kidnap you to find it? And then let me kill them to save yourself the trouble?”

“Clever, too?” Bela asked, genuine surprise in her eyes when she glanced up to Jo. “Don’t see that in hunters often either.”

“Either? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bela looked up from her prize, and just from the way she was looking at Jo alone, the answer become clearly apparent.

“Well… most of you tend to look like you’ve been throw into a brick wall one too many times, as I’m sure you’ve seen. You, on the other hand?” Bela let the question hang in the air and grinned when Jo’s face started heating up with something other than anger. Only then did she look away, drawling out an afterthought of, “And to be clear, I was planning on pick-pocketing it. I prefer not to go in guns blazing when the opportunity presents itself.”

“You used me,” Jo replied, still trying to hold onto her anger.

“I did, and now I apologize,” Bela blithely responded, “But you didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done anyways, and you’re no worse for the wear, are you?”

Jo hated how much sense she made, even though some part of her was warning her to the opposite. But Bela spoke convincingly, confidently, like she’d never known what it was like to be wrong, and Jo would’ve been lying if she’d said it wasn’t starting to work.

And objectively speaking, Bela was right, wasn’t she? Other than the usual scrapes and bruises, Jo was still perfectly intact. And, well, wouldn’t she have stormed the place eventually anyways, hostage or not? She’d been there to kill the vampires in the first place, after all.

Bela was like a shark smelling blood in the water, sensing Jo’s doubt in herself the second it started to show up and striking with a smile and an easy promise of,

“And I’m sure I can find some way to pay you back.”

Jo knew she was still supposed to be angry, and she’d been any more her mother’s child, she _would_ be, but… well, she’d had her fair share of hunters hit on her when her mother hadn’t been around, but most of them reeked of enough testosterone to send her reeling back across the room, and with the exception of one Winchester, she’d certainly never crushed on any before.

Definitely not anyone as charming or pretty or confident as Bela, either.

It was easy to tell herself that this was a bad idea, but a whole lot harder to believe it. Besides, she’d already done a lot of dumb things. Dropped out her senior year of high school with no plans. Never hoped to head to college. Quit the only job she’d ever had to make a living off fraud and hunt monsters on the side. What was more decision that had the potential to go bad?

If Jo died with regrets, she wanted them to be over the things she’d done and not what she’d never pulled together the nerve to do.

“If I remember what you wrote last time right, then we’ve got a second free, don’t we? So you owe me a drink,” Jo replied, taking pleasure in how Bela’s brows shot up. “And if it’s something fancy enough, then maybe I’ll forgive the whole six versus one thing, let you start with a clean slate.”

Bela looked her up and down again, then a second time, like she was seeing her for a second time. Her lips twisted up into that same shiny white grin, except this time it seemed a little sincerer.

“Champagne it is,” Bela crooned, reaching out to lock her arm around Jo’s.

 

 

* * *

 

 

                A few months down the line when Bela found the bottle of Perrier Jo had kept in her glovebox since she’d left, Jo just smiled and glanced over to where Bela sat in the passenger seat, finally finding the will to crack it open.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even like champagne lol


End file.
